The Open Data Protocol (OData) is an open REST-ful protocol for exposing and consuming data on the web. Also known as Astoria, ADO.NET Data Services, now officially called WCF Data Services in the .NET Framework. There are also SDKs available for other platforms like JavaScript and PHP.
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Importing Excel Spreadsheets is something that we often do with SQL Server. However it's not as easy as you would like as we move to the 64 bit platform. Peter He brings us a method that will work on all platforms.
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Recently I needed to find a method to import one cell of an Excel sheet into SQL Server 2005 using a scheduled job on a 64 bit clustered environment. For example, I have a monthly sales report listing sales per product category, such as Books, Magazines, DVDs, etc. I only want to import the Total Sales amount into SQL Server and this number is located in an Excel file "sales.xls.sheet1.cell.B5". I used to use OPENROWSET to solve the problem, however OPENROWSET requires Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider which is not available in 64 bit. In this tip I am going to talk about how to use SSIS to accomplish this task easily.
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Thiago kicks off a new series of articles, taking us through everything we need to know to use PowerPivot effectively. First off, he walks us through the prerequisites, and getting started with our first basic data set.
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The inclusion of the CLR in SQL Server has been controversial, but some people have come up with great ways to take advantage of this feature. New author Anders Pedersen brings us a technique to export data from SQL Server into Excel using the CLR.
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